A CORRECTION.
ITo THE EDITOR OF THE " SPECTATOR•"1 SIR,—I have only this afternoon noticed for the first time the short review in the Spectator of February 2fith of my book " Memories." There is a passage in it so unfair and untrue that I must ask your attention to it. Your reviewer says :—" Mr. Kelly himself is not too friendly. He tells us that an Anglican clergy- man on ship-board related in the smoking-room a story which was too gross for the saloon. What is his evidence ? A young man told him that the clergyman was going to tell it ! Is this sufficient for one minister of Christ to condemn another ? " In my "Memories" (p. 196) there is not from first to last one word about an Anglican clergyman connected with the incident. The person who told the story was not an Anglican, not a clergyman, not an Englishman. He was a merchant from the other Bide of the Atlantic returning from the March London sales of furs and other commodities. Of course I condemned no minister in the case. We expect better work than this from the Spectator, which is regularly read by a large number of Wesleyan ; and I do not doubt the editor expects better work from his writers.—I am, Sir, &c.,
Spanish Close, Wandsworth Common, S.W.
CHARLES H. KELLY.
P.S.—The following is the entire paragraph referred to in the Spectator notice of " Memories " (p. 196) :—" Very late one night I was alone on deck. A youth came out of the smoking saloon. He told me that Mr. — had just said : 'Now I will tell you men a story. It is not a very clean one, and I should have told it in the saloon the other night, but I-dare not as Mr. Kelly was there!' So, said the lad, thought if he dare not tell it in your presence, it was something my mother would not like me to hear, and I came out
[Our apologies are due to Mr. Kelly for a blunder, and a bad blunder, and when apologies are due they cannot be too ample. Our reviewer thought that the Mr. — referred to was the same person as an Anglican clergyman referred to on the page which precedes that on which the smoking-room incident is described. No man has complete immunity from making such unaccountable blunders, but we deeply regret that on this blunder should have been founded a comment which was unjustifiable, and which Mr. Kelly most naturally resents.—En. Spectator.]
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